Riga: where to stay, when to go, and how to get around

Overview

Riga is the largest of the three Baltic capitals and the one with the biggest, densest centre — a real working city of nearly three-quarters of a million people rather than a compact old town with suburbs bolted on. It sits on the Daugava, a wide, slow river a few kilometres upstream of the Gulf of Riga, and the split it makes matters: almost everything a visitor wants is on the right (east) bank, and the left bank, Pārdaugava, is residential and greener. The draw is layered — a medieval Hanseatic core, then a ring of extraordinary Art Nouveau apartment blocks thrown up in the boom around 1900, then a belt of nineteenth-century wooden houses further out. It is also cheaper than Western Europe, which cuts both ways: good value for food and rooms, and a magnet for weekend drinking crowds that give the Old Town a rowdier edge than its looks suggest.

Where to stay

The centre divides cleanly into a few characters, and unlike a small town the choice here is real: the Old Town and the Art Nouveau Centrs are a ten-minute walk apart but feel like different cities, and the left bank is a genuine trade of atmosphere for calm. Most visitors should stay on the right bank; the tram and trolleybus network (run by Rīgas satiksme) covers the rest.

Vecrīga (the Old Town)

The medieval core — cobbled lanes, the brick spire of St Peter’s, the Dome Cathedral, the guild houses and the reconstructed House of the Blackheads on the town hall square. Stay here if it is your first visit and you want the landmarks, the river and the restaurants on your doorstep, all on foot. The trade-offs are the usual ones plus a specific local one: it is the priciest area, the cobbles are hard on wheeled cases, and on Friday and Saturday nights the bar streets around Kaļķu iela and the central squares fill with stag and hen groups drawn by cheap drink. Pick a room on a side lane, not over a bar.

The Quiet Centre and Art Nouveau district (Centrs / Klusais centrs)

North and east of the Old Town, past the Freedom Monument and the canal park, the grid opens into wide streets of ornate apartment houses. Alberta iela and Elizabetes iela hold the greatest concentration of Jugendstil façades in the city, and the surrounding blocks are full of embassies, cafés and good restaurants. Stay here if you want an elegant, calm base that is still a five-to-ten-minute walk into the Old Town. What you give up is being in the thick of the sights — this is a place you come home to rather than step out into — and the very quiet residential streets have little open late.

Around the Central Market and the station

Just south of the Old Town, the Central Market fills five vast old Zeppelin hangars, and the train and coach stations sit beside it. This is the practical base: arrive late, leave early, do day trips, and eat cheaply at the market. The trade-off is character and comfort — it is a transport zone rather than a pretty one, and immediately east lies Maskavas forštate (Maskavas iela), an older, poorer quarter that is interesting by day but that many find bleak and edgy after dark. Fine for a functional stay, less so for a first impression of the city.

Miera iela and the north (Centrs, toward the Tallinas kvartāls)

Northeast of the grand centre, Miera iela (“Peace Street”) is Riga’s low-key bohemian strip — small cafés, a chocolate factory, independent shops — running up past the vast Great Cemetery parkland. The nearby Tallinas kvartāls, a former hospital block, has become a creative courtyard of studios and bars. Stay here if you want a neighbourhood that feels lived-in and a bit alternative rather than polished. The trade-off is distance: it is a fifteen-to-twenty-minute walk or a short tram ride to the Old Town, and there is less to do within stumbling distance at night.

Āgenskalns and the left bank (Pārdaugava)

Across the river, Āgenskalns is the most appealing left-bank district — leafy streets, a restored wooden market hall, and some of the best-surviving nineteenth-century wooden architecture in the city. Stay here for quiet, lower prices and a residential feel, or if you are staying longer and want to live where locals do. The clear trade-off is the river: you cross a bridge by tram or bus to reach everything central, and the left bank has no Old Town buzz of its own.

When to go

Summer (June to August) is the season, and for a northern reason: the days are very long, terraces spill onto the streets, and the whole city decamps to the parks and to the beach at Jūrmala. It is the warmest, liveliest stretch and also the busiest and dearest. The one date to know is Jāņi (midsummer, 23–24 June) — the biggest festival of the Latvian year, when much of the city leaves for the countryside and many places close for a couple of days. Late spring (May) and early autumn (September) are mild, green and quieter. Winter is long, dark and cold — snow lies for months and daylight is scarce by mid-afternoon — but the Old Town looks its best under snow and the Christmas market on the Dome square is a genuine draw. February is bleak; if the architecture is your reason for coming, wait for the light.

Getting there & around

Riga International Airport is southwest of the centre, and the cheapest way in is the city bus (route 22 runs to the centre near the station and stops close to the Old Town); buy the ticket from the driver or a machine. A taxi or ride-hailing car takes about twenty minutes and is inexpensive by European standards — agree the app fare rather than flagging one at the terminal. There is no train to the airport yet.

In the city, you do not need a car — the centre is walkable and the tram, trolleybus and bus network reaches everywhere else cheaply; drivers should also note that much of Vecrīga is closed to traffic. The one journey worth making is by train from the Central Station to Jūrmala, the string of beach and pine-forest resort towns half an hour along the coast — an easy half-day in summer. Trains also run inland to Sigulda and the Gauja valley for castles and forest walks. Long-distance coaches from the bus station next door link Riga to Tallinn and Vilnius in roughly four to five hours each.

Practicalities

Riga is a safe, easy city; the sensible caution is the ordinary night-time kind around the station, the Maskavas quarter and the Old Town bar streets at weekends. The currency is the euro, cards are accepted almost everywhere, and contactless works on public transport and in most shops. Latvian is the official language, though Russian is widely spoken and English is normal in the centre and among younger people.

On food, the things to try are genuinely local rather than borrowed: dark, dense rye bread (rupjmaize), which turns up even as a sweet dessert; grey peas with bacon (pelēkie zirņi ar speķi), the closest thing to a national dish; smoked and pickled fish and tinned sprats from the Central Market; and Rīgas Melnais balzams (Riga Black Balsam), a bitter, tar-black herbal liqueur that is an acquired taste — most people meet it mixed into a hot berry drink or with cola rather than neat. The Central Market is the single best place to eat cheaply and see what Latvians actually buy; go hungry and in the morning, when it is busiest and freshest.